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Uh, well…
I so wanted to go in, sit down, and have some stupid fun,
just some low-rent entertainment about the misadventures of
a couple of vipers without a lot of plot or character arcs
to trouble my mind. Friday After Next has a wafer-thin
plot. Craig (Cube) and Day-Day (Epps) get ripped
off and tree-whipped on Christmas Eve by the Santa Claus Bandit,
who then flits in and out of their miserable day on the job
as strip mall rent-a-cops. Their quest: to get their rent
money back. That’s it, and despite its simplicity, it was
still too much plot. One can detect that some minimal effort
was expended to attend to the story line, but most of the
scenes are excuses to use gags that Cube et al. probably found
screamingly funny while sitting at home, smoking shit. The
writers never saw a cheap pun or throwaway joke they didn’t
like, which leads to knee-slappers like police officers sporting
badges labeled B. Dix and A. Hole. All the more impetus for
my Truth In Movie Labeling campaign. If the writers were toasted
when they wrote the movie, we should know that, so that we
can be similarly altered when watching.
Though the movie has absolutely no character development
and is pretty aggressively dumb, these characteristics cannot
guarantee enjoyment, and in fact Friday After Next
fails to deliver the recommended movie fun quotient. That’s
too bad, because Mr. Cube is one exceptionally charming guy,
and watching him, you really want him to succeed. His engaging
presence helps some, but that leaves a whole slew of characters
you’ll want to go upside with a two-by-four, starting with
the hyper-annoying Day-Day. Yes, he’s supposed to be a fool,
but really now. Then there’s Craig’s daddy, John Witherspoon,
whose level of foolery has increased with every screen appearance
until it almost rises to the level of, well, unpleasant racial
stereotype.
On the plus side, John Murphy’s highly Elfman-influenced
score almost puts one in the right madcap mood to appreciate
the silliness. And I feel a grudging admiration for the dogged
determination with which Cube et al. eked out the necessary
running time: When in doubt, whenever the script bogs down,
time for another chase! The movie is full of this sort of
scripting laziness. Viewers who are just old enough or censorious
enough to recognize that gayness isn’t humorous in and of
itself will also have to deduct points. Still, the built-in
fan base for the Friday franchise may keep it going
long enough that we’ll have to start talking about good and
bad in terms of evens versus odds, a la the Star Trek
movies.
Friday After Next made me long to rent Friday,
which was actually funny. I never thought I’d write that a
film “needs Chris Tucker” but…
—Roxanne Bogucka
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
